Page 8 - Malatesta

F. Angelelli et al.
18

was chosen at Largo Santa Susanna,
where the architect Canevari planned and
built a new building. To provisionally host
the Agrarian Geological Museum, the
courtyard and part of the choir of the a-
djacent Convent of Holy Maria Vittoria
was expropriated, with the justification of
public benefit “….nelle poche camere avu-
te in prestito nella scuola degli ingegneri
di Roma a S. Pietro in Vincoli, appena
sufficienti per tenervi alcuni disegnatori;
onde le collezioni già esistenti devono per
ora tenersi quasi per intero incassate in
2
magazzino” (GIORDANO F., 1881 ). The
new building was conceived to host the
scientific material previously housed at
different institutions: the Royal School of
application in Turin, the Museum of Natu-
ral History in Florence, the Museum of
Natural History in Pisa, the Mining District
of Caltanissetta, the Royal University in
rd
Rome). On May 3 , 1885, King Umberto I
officially opened the Geological Agrarian
Museum (Fig. 8).
Two years after the Museum ope-
ning, the collections already consist of
over 10.000 remains (as it is recorded at
p. 8 in the report Cenno intorno ai lavori
del Comitato Geologico nel 1877: “…le
collezioni finora formate di rocce e fossili
raggiungono il numero di 12 a 13,000
esemplari… e tuttodì si vanno accre-
3
scendo e classificando” (ZEZI P. ., 1878).
Since then, the collections substantially
increased, thanks to the numerous fos-
sils collected by the geologists during
their field surveys for the compilation of
the Geological Map of Italy, and to dona-
tions, purchases, and exchanges with
other national and foreign scientific insti-
tutions. At present, the palaeontological
collection counts over 100.000 pieces.
The fossil repository was placed at the
third floor of the Largo Santa Susanna
building, together with four annexed of-
fices. The first of those communicated
with the exposition room and, initially, it
was used for the fossils study and consultation. The to the painstaking work of cleaning, indexing and clas-
fourth room, at the end of the corridor where the bust of sification. He compiled tens and tens of labels by his
Quintino Sella was placed (Fig. 9), was assigned to A. own hand, each label placed almost always on the bot-
Malatesta who worked there throughout his perma- tom of cardboard pillboxes in which the fossils were
nence at the Geological Survey of Italy. There he spent preserved, with the name of the species, the number of
long time to rearrange the fossils, devoting himself the samples and the place of origin.

2 Felice Giordano, Chief Inspector of the Royal Corp of Mines in Rome (since 1859) was a member of the Royal Geological Committee
from 1891, assuming its leadership for many years.
3 Engineer of Royal Corp of Mines, was editorial secretary and collaborator of Royal Geological Committee of Italy from 1870 to 1908.